pushing its way into favour in Roman society at this time--I mean
astrology. One may call it transcendental because it was based, in its
original home in the East, on a mystical notion of sympathy between the
phenomena of the starry heavens and the phenomena of human life;[862]
and that this notion was carefully inculcated by those who taught the
"science" at Rome is shown by the long and wearisome poem on astrology
written by Manilius in the succeeding age. But it is not likely that
this form of mysticism had become really popular before the period of
the Empire, and in any case it can hardly be called a part of Roman
religious experience. I only mention it here as helping to illustrate
the way in which men's minds were now beginning to turn with interest to
speculations altogether beyond the range of that practical ethical
philosophy which was natural and congenial to the Roman, altogether
beyond the horizon of man's daily prospect in this world. The growing
interest in Fortuna, both as natural force and deity, which became
intense under the Empire, is another indication of the same
tendency.[863]
As soon as Rome had come into close contact with Greece, which had long
before been overrun by the eastern astrology--by the Chaldaeans or
_mathematici_, as they are so often called--these experts began to
appear also in Italy. We first hear of them from old Cato, who advises
that the steward of an estate should be strictly forbidden to consult
_Chaldaei_, _harioli_, _haruspices_, and such gentry.[864] In 139
B.C.--a year in which there happened to be in Rome an embassy from Simon
Maccabaeus--Chaldaeans were ordered to leave Rome and Italy within ten
days; but I think there is some evidence that these were really Jews who
were trying to propagate their own religion.[865] For some time we hear
nothing more of these intruders; but they probably gained ground again
in the course of the Mithridatic wars, which were responsible for the
introduction of much Oriental religion into Italy. They are mentioned in
87, together with [Greek: thytai] and Sibyllistae, as persuading the
ill-fated Octavius to remain in Rome to meet his death, as it turned
out, at the hands of the Marians.[866] But no Roman seems to have taken
up astrology as a quasi-scientific study till that Nigidius, of whom I
have already said a word, was persuaded thus to waste his time and
brains. He is said to have foretold the greatness of Augustus at his
birth in 63 B.C.;[867] and from this time forward the taking of
horoscopes or _genethliaca_ became a favourite pursuit at
Rome--unfortunately for the people of Europe, who caught the infection
and kept it endemic for at least fifteen centuries.
Astrology is in no sense religion, and I must leave it with these few
remarks. It represents the individual and his personal interests, not
even the advantage of the community, and it was for this reason that the
Chaldaei were disliked by the Roman government. The individual is not
satisfied with legitimate Roman means of divination; he is employing
illegitimate ways when he entrusts himself to these Orientals, who, most
of them doubtless, well deserved the scathing contempt which Tacitus has
contrived to put into six words: "Genus hominum potentibus infidum,
sperantibus fallax," adding, with no less contempt for the Roman
authorities who had to deal with them, that they will always be
forbidden, and always will be found at Rome.[868]
NOTES TO LECTURE XVII
[804] For the Pythagoreanism of the Neo-platonic
movement in the third century A.D. consult Bussell,
_Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics_ (Edin. 1910), p.
30 foll., who explains the reaction from Stoicism to
Neo-Platonism. See also Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, ii.
162 foll.
[805] Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 403, says that
it had ceased to exist for centuries as a philosophy,
but cautiously adds in a note that the knowledge of it
was not extinct. The famous Orphic tablets from South
Italy are taken as dating from the third and fourth
centuries B.C., and if not actually Pythagorean, they
are next door to being so. See Miss Harrison,
_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 660.
[806] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 38.
[807] See, _e.g._, Prof. Taylor's little book on Plato
(Constable), p. 11.
[808] See above, p. 349.
[809] Sextus Empiricus, _adv. Physicos_, ii. 281 foll.
[810] For the devotion of the believers to the founder
and his _ipse dixit_, see Cicero, _Nat. Deor._ i. 5. 10.
[811] The relation of Posidonius to Roman literature has
been much discussed of late. See, _e.g._, Norden,
Virgil, _Aen._ vi., index, _s.v._ "Stoa"; Schmekel, _Die
mittlere Stoa_, 85 foll., 238 foll.
[812] For Panaetius' enthusiasm for Plato and his
teaching, see Cic. _Tusc. Disp._ i. 32. 79; the whole
passage indicates, though it does not exactly prove, an
approach to the Platonic psychology.
[813] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 85.
[814] See above, p. 75. The idea that the practice of
cremation influenced the ideas of the Roman about the
soul was first, I think, suggested by Boissier,
_Religion romaine_, i. 310. Cicero himself hints at this
conclusion in _Tusc. Disp._ i. 16. 36: "In terram enim
cadentibus corporibus, hisque humo tectis, e quo dictum
est humari, sub terra censebant reliquam vitam agi
mortuorum. Quam eorum opinionem magni errores consecuti
sunt; quos auxerunt poetae."
[815] This point is well put by Dill, p. 493 of _Roman
Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_. See also
Dieterich, _Eine Mithras-Liturgie_, p. 200 fol.;
Stewart, _Myths of Plato_, 352-53.
[816] Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 400 foll.
[817] _De Rep._ vi. 26.
[818] _Ib._ The word _providet_ reminds us that this
transcendental philosophy supplied the later Stoics with
an explanation of divination. See Bouche-Leclercq,
_Hist. de divination_, i. 68; Dill, _op. cit._ p. 439;
Seneca, _Nat. Quaest._ ii. 52, fully accepted
divination. Cp. Cic. _Tusc. Disp._ i. 37. 66, where he
quotes his own _Consolatio_; see above, p. 388.
Panaetius, however, had courageously denied divination:
Cic. _Div._ i. 3. 6; Zeller, _Stoics_, etc., p. 352.
[819] _De Rep._ vi. 15, 26, and 29.
[820] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 16. 36 foll. On the whole subject
of the rise of the soul after death see Dieterich, _Eine
Mithras-Liturgie_, p. 179 foll.
[821] Schmekel, _op. cit._ p. 438; Stewart, _Myths of
Plato_, p. 300.
[822] For Nigidius, see Schanz, _Gesch. der roem.
Literatur_ (ed. 2), vol. ii. p. 419 foll.
[823] "Nigidius Figulus Pythagoreus et magus in exilio
moritur" is the notice of him in St. Jerome's Chronicle
for the year 45 B.C.
[824] These letters are in the 12th book of those to
Atticus, Nos. 12-40.
[825] _Ad Att._ xii. 36. The translation is Shuckburgh's.
[826] A good example is Virg. _Aen._ viii. 349, but it
is needless to multiply instances of the _religio loci_.
Serv. _ad Aen._ i. 314 defines _lucus_ as "arborum
multitudo cum religione."
[827] _Ad Att._ xii. 36; cp. 35. He uses the Greek word
[Greek: apotheosis] in 35. 1, which seems to have come
into use in his own time; see Liddell & Scott, _s.v._
[828] See above, p. 58.
[829] _Aen._ vi. 743. The meaning of these words seems
to be quite plain, though commentators have worried
themselves over them from Servius downwards. The mistake
has been in not sufficiently considering the force of
_quisque_, and puzzling too much over the vague word
_Manes_. Henry discerned the true meaning in our own
time. See his _Aeneidea_, vol. iii. p. 397. Cp. the
words quoted above from _Somn. Scip._: "mens cuiusque is
est quisque." M. S. Reinach (_Cultes_, etc. ii. 135
foll.) is not far out: "Nous souffrons chacun suivant le
degre de souillure de nos ames."
[830] _C.I.L._ i. 639, with Mommsen's note.
[831] See _R.F._ p. 308.
[832] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 12. 27. For the "ius Manium," _de
Legibus_, ii. 22 and 54 foll.
[833] _Ad Att._ xii. 18: "Longum illud tempus _cum non
ero_ magis me movet quam hoc exiguum," etc. Cp. _Tusc._
i. _ad fin._
[834] _Ad Fam._ iv. 5. 6: "Quod si quis apud inferos
sensus est, qui illius in te amor fuit pietasque in
omnes suos, hoc certe illa te facere nonvult."
[835] Sall. _Cat._ ch. 51: "Mortem cuncta mortalium
dissolvere, ultra neque curae neque gaudio locum esse."
This is the Epicurean doctrine, which Caesar was said to
hold.
[836] Catull. 5. 6; Pliny, _N.H._ vii. 188. The whole
passage is worth quoting: "Post sepulturam vanae Manium
ambages. Omnibus a supremo die eadem quae ante primum,
nec magis a morte sensus ullus aut corpori aut animae
quam ante natalem. Eadem enim vanitas in futurum etiam
se propagat et in mortis quoque tempora sibi vitam
mentitur, alias immortalitatem animae, alias
transfigurationem, _alias sensum inferis dando et Manes
colendo deumque faciendo qui iam etiam homo esse
desierit_, ceu vero ullo modo spirandi ratio ceteris
animalibus praestet, aut non diuturniora in vita multa
reperiantur quibus nemo similem divinat immortalitatem,"
etc.
[837] There is an essay on this form of literature in
the _Etudes morales sur l'antiquite_ of Constant Martha,
p. 135 foll.
[838] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 27. 66.
[839] Lact. _Inst._ i. 15. 20.
[840] Lact. iii. 18.
[841] See Schanz, _Gesch. der roem. Literatur_, vol. ii.
p. 376.
[842] Fragments 54 and 55.
[843] P. 158 foll.
[844] Lucr. vi. 764 foll. Cp. iii. 966 foll.; Masson,
_Lucretius_, i. p. 402. Mr. Cyril Bailey also reminds me
of Lucr. iii. 31-93, and 1053 to end; and adds a decided
opinion that the poet is not here thinking of the common
Roman, but of the educated Roman brought up on Greek and
Graeco-Roman poetry and philosophy.
[845] Polyb. vi. 56.
[846] _Tusc._ i. 46. 111.
[847] See Roscher's _Myth. Lex._ _s.v._ "Orcus";
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 192.
[848] See above, p. 107.
[849] Mueller-Deecke, _Etrusker_, ii. 108 foll.
Illustrations can be seen in Dennis, _Cities and
Cemeteries of Etruria_, ed. 2.
[850] _Captivi_, v. 4. 1.
[851] _La Religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins_, vol.
i. p. 310.
[852] Cic. _Tusc._ i. 16. 37. For the eschatology of the
sixth _Aeneid_, a curious melange of religion,
philosophy, and folklore, see Norden's work on Virgil,
_Aeneid_, vi. (index, p. 468). Norden believes, I may
note, that the philosophical and religious elements in
it are mainly derived from Posidonius. Cp. also Glover,
_Studies in Virgil_, ch. x. (Hades). For popular
beliefs in Hades, etc., under the Empire, see
Friedlaender's _Sittengeschichte_, vol. iii. last
chapter.
[853] Weil, _Etudes sur l'antiquite grecque_, p. 12,
quoted by Glover, p. 218.
[854] See above, p. 105.
[855] Since this lecture was written a most interesting
discussion of Greek ideas, Achaean and Pelasgic, about
the relation of soul and body after death, has appeared
in Mr. Lawson's _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek
Religion_, especially in chapters v. and vi., confirming
me, to some extent at least, in the conjecture I had
here hazarded. The working of the imagination in regard
to a future state is in Greece, in his view, peculiar to
the older or Pelasgic population; and if the Etruscans
were of Pelasgic stock, as is now believed by many,
their imaginative grotesqueness, a degraded form perhaps
of the original characteristic, acting on the ideas of a
still more primitive population of which the Lemuria is
a survival, might explain the later prevalence of a
gruesome eschatology at Rome. But whoever studies Mr.
Lawson's chapters closely will find serious difficulties
in the way even of such a hypothesis as this.
[856] Ovid, _Fasti_, v. 430 foll.; _R.F._ p. 109.
Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 192, attributes the ideas of larvae
(ghosts) and of Orcus, not to religion, but to popular
superstition. If he here means by religion the State
religion and the _Parentalia_ in particular, I can agree
with him.
[857] Dr. Carter allows this in Hastings' _Dict. of
Religion and Ethics_, vol. i. (Roman section of article
"Ancestor Worship.")
[858] See _R.F._ p. 334.
[859] _R.F._ p. 107.
[860] _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, ii. 693
foll.
[861] Varro, _L.L._ v. 25; Paulus p. 216;
Huelsen-Jordan, _Roem. Topogr._ iii. p. 268 foll. The
remains of these puticuli were unluckily very
imperfectly reported, and have been lost in the building
of the Rome of to-day. On the question of the religious
aspect of the two ways of disposing of the dead, burial
and cremation, it is as well to remember Dieterich's
warning in _Mutter Erde_, p. 66, note: "den Versuch, aus
der Verbreitung und dem Wechsel der Sitte des
Verbrennens und Begrabens fuer meine Untersuchung
Schluesse zu gewinnen, habe ich voellig aufgegeben, als
ich angesichts der ungeheueren Materialen meines
Kollegen von Duhn die Unmoeglicheit solcher Schluesse
einsehen musste." In Mr. Lawson's book quoted above it
seems to me to be proved that the object of both methods
is the same, viz. to destroy the body as quickly as
possible in order to prevent the soul from re-entering
it and annoying the survivors.
[862] This is well explained by Cumont in his _Religions
orientales dans le paganisme romain_, p. 196 foll.,
following Bouche-Leclercq's work on astrology in Greece.
Cumont thinks that astrology took over the business of
the augurs and haruspices, which was now dropped, and
this is true in the main as regards the individual, but
not as regards the State; see above, p. 308 foll.
[863] For Fortuna in the writings of Caesar, etc., see
_Classical Review_, vol. xvii. p. 153. The _locus
classicus_ for Fortuna as a deity under the early empire
is Pliny, _N.H._ ii. 22.
[864] Cato, _R.R._ ch. v. 4.
[865] Val. Max. i. 3. 2, who no doubt was following
Livy; for in the Epitomes of some lost books of Livy
discovered at Oxyrrhyncus by Grenfell and Hunt (_Oxyrrh.
Papyri_, vol. iv. p. 101), the same fact is alluded to.
For the embassy, Maccab. i. 14. 24; xv. 15-24. Two
extracts from the text of Valerius, which is here lost,
both state that proselytising Jews were at this time
driven from Rome; the Jupiter Sabazius, whose cult they
were propagating, can hardly be other than that of
Jehovah; see Schuerer, _Jewish People in the Time of
Christ_, pt. ii. vol. ii. p. 233 of the English
translation. The expulsion of Chaldaei may, however,
have been a separate measure of the praetor Hispalus.
[866] Plutarch, _Marius_, 42.
[867] Suet. _Aug._ 1. I have seen a learned work about a
century old, now entirely forgotten, in which it is
maintained that Virgil's fourth Eclogue is simply a
genethliacon of Augustus; the arguments, which are
ingenious but futile, are drawn from the poem of
Manilius.
[868] Tacitus, _Hist._ i. 22.
LECTURE XVIII
RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE POEMS OF VIRGIL
My justification for devoting a whole lecture to Virgil must be that
this great poet, more warmly and sympathetically than any other Latin
author, gives expression to the best religious feeling of the Roman
mind. And this is so not only in regard to the tendencies of religion in
his own day; he stands apart from all his literary contemporaries in
that he sums up the past of Roman religious experience, reflects that of
his own time, and also looks forward into the future. No other poet, no
historian, not even Livy, who sprang from the same region and in his
tone and spirit in some ways resembles Virgil, has the same broad
outlook, the same tender interest in religious antiquity, the same
all-embracing sympathy for the Roman world he knew, and the same
confident and cheerful hope for its future. Each of the Augustan
poets--Horace, Ovid, Propertius, Tibullus--has his own peculiar gift and
charm; but those who know Virgil through and through will at once
acknowledge the difference between these and the man possessed of
spiritual insight. They are helpful in various ways to the student of
Roman religion, and Tibullus especially has a simple reverence for the
old religion which has inspired a few exquisite descriptions of this
aspect of Italian life. But, if I may use the word, they had no
mission; they were true poets, yet not poets of the prophetic order;
they had not thought deeply and reached conviction, like Lucretius and
Virgil. A few words from the conclusion of an Edinburgh professor's
admirable work on Virgil will sufficiently express what I mean. "His
religious belief," says Sellar, "like his other speculative convictions,
was composite and undefined; yet it embraced what was purest and most
vital in the religions of antiquity, and in its deepest intuitions it
seems to look forward to the belief which became dominant in Rome four
centuries later."[869] In fact, Virgil gathers up what was valuable in
the past of Rome and adds to it a new element, a new source of life and
hope. It was this that made it possible for a great French critic to
assert that for those who have read Virgil there is nothing astonishing
in Christianity.[870] Let us try and realise what these writers mean.
The Scotsman is sober and earnest, the Frenchman epigrammatically
exaggerating; but the feeling that underlies both utterances is a true
one.
We have traced the gradual paralysis of the secularised State religion.
We have glanced at the two types of philosophical thought which took the
place of that religion in the minds of the cultivated section of Roman
society, neither of which could adequately supply the Roman and Italian
mind with an expression of its own natural feeling, never wholly
extinct, of its relation to the Power manifesting itself in the
universe. Stoicism came near to doing what was needed, by rehabilitating
itself on Italian soil and indulging Roman preconceptions of the divine;
but it could not greatly affect the mass of men, and its appeal was not
to feeling, but to reason. Epicurism, though perhaps more popular, was
in reality more in conflict with what was best in the Italian nature,
and the passionate appeal of Lucretius to look for comfort to a
scientific knowledge of the _rerum natura_ had no enduring power to
cheer. Lastly, we have examined the tendency of the same age towards
mysticism and Cicero's doubting and embarrassed expression of it, and we
found that this tendency rather illustrates a sense of something
wanting than hopefully satisfies it. We may well feel ourselves, now we
have arrived at the close of the Republican era, just as the best men of
that day felt, that there _is_ something wanting. In their minds this
feeling almost amounted to despair; in ours, as we read the story of the
troublous time after the death of Caesar, it is pity and wonder. There
was, in fact, more than a sense of weariness and discomfort, moral and
material, in the Roman mind of that generation--there was also what we
may almost call a sense of sin, such a feeling, though doubtless less
real and intense, as that which their prophets, from time to time, awoke
in the Jewish people, and one not unknown in the history of Hellas. It
was essentially a feeling of neglected duty--of neglected duty to the
Power and of goodwill wanting towards men. Lucretius had been
unconsciously a powerful witness to this feeling, but had not found the
remedy. In the early Augustan age it is again expressed by Horace, by
Sallust, and more deeply and truly in the beautiful preface to Livy's
History.[871] Livy there says that he devoted himself to the early
annals of Rome that he might shut his eyes to the evils of his own
time--"tempora quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus."
This something wanting was then a feeling, a _religio_, if we can
venture to use the old word once more in the sense which I have so often
attributed to it. Not an unreasonable or ungovernable feeling, not a
_superstitio_, but a feeling of happy dependence on a higher Power, and
a desire to conform to His will in all the relations of human life. This
is the kind of feeling that had always lain at the root of the Roman
_pietas_, the sense of duty to family and State, and to the deities who
protected them. In the jarring of factions, the cruelty and bloodshed of
tyrants, and the luxurious self-indulgence of the last two generations,
the voice of _pietas_ had been silenced, the better instincts of
humanity had gone down. We have to see what was done by our poet to
awake that voice again and to put fresh life into those instincts. Only
let us remember that more permanent good is done in this world by a
beautiful nature giving itself its natural expression, than by precept
or denunciation; and beware of attributing to Virgil more direct
consciousness of his mission than he really felt. It is the nature of
the man that is of value to us in our studies, as it was to the Romans
in their despair, a nature ruled by sweet, calm feeling, full of
sympathy and full of hope.
The something wanting in others which we find in Virgil only, or in him
more convincingly felt and more resonantly expressed, is a kindly and
hopeful outlook on the world, with a deep and real sympathy for all
sorrow and pain. It is not the result of any definite religious
conviction; it is in the nature of the man, and is of the very fibre of
his being; but it made him a better religious teacher than the rest,
just because real religion is not a matter of reason only, or of
convention, or of art, but of feeling. This was the true antidote to
despair or depression--a sympathy with man in all he does or suffers,
not an indignant cry of remonstrance like that of Lucretius. Virgil's
sympathetic outlook includes not only Man, but the animal world, and
there can be no better proof that his feeling was genuine. The
nightingale robbed of her young,[872]
quem durus arator
observans nido implumes detraxit: at illa
flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen
integrat et maestis late loca questibus implet;
the cattle smitten by the plague,[873] the migrating birds coming in
from the sea,[874] and many another tender touch, all show us the
feeling of which I am speaking; for he who could so feel towards animals
must needs have a soul of pity for man. So, too, with the inanimate
nature of Italy; the land in which Virgil's shepherds and husbandmen
live and work is one full of such detailed loveliness as might suggest a
beneficent Power presiding over it all, inviting man to lift up his
heart in gratitude or prayer. As Sellar has well remarked,[875] the
sense of natural beauty is in the _Georgics_ intertwined with the toil
of man, raising, as it were, the toiler to a higher level of humanity as
he lifts his eyes from his work. And this natural beauty is made real
for the reader by the life and force that everywhere pervades it; all
nature is alive and full of feeling; the fruit trees, for example, in
the second _Georgic_ seem instinct with an almost human life.[876] The
moment this comes home to us we see how it harmonises with all we have
learnt of the old Italian conception of the divine, of the forceful
_numina_ working for man's benefit if properly propitiated. And even
when Virgil is using the language of the Stoics to explain the life of
nature, we feel that behind the philosophical theory there lies this
feeling of the Italian:
deum namque ire per omnes
terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum:
hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum.[877]
This is the religious spirit of the _Georgics_; the divine forces are
everywhere, and a man must submit himself to them and seek their aid. He
finds his true resource rather in prayer than in philosophy, his part in
the world is "laborare et orare." The hard lot of the Hesiodic labourer
is not that of the _agricola_ of the _Georgics_, who carries on his
campaign of toil with a cheerful heart and a clear conscience, for he is
in right relation with the Power manifesting itself in the life around
him.
This, then, so far as I can describe it without going too far into
detail, is the feeling, the _religio_, which was needed in the Italy of
that day. We may, perhaps, venture to compare its revival in the work of
Virgil with the return to nature in the English poetry of a century ago,
which also brought with it a revival of religious fervency. Though
Virgil and Wordsworth are in many ways as unlike as two poets can be,
they are alike in the possession of that gentle and trustful outlook on
the world of nature which stimulates the mind to think of itself in its
relation to the Power. We do not need to analyse the process or to put
it into any logical shape; we may rest content with it as a fact in the
history of Roman religious experience.